Auscultation has long been a very useful tool for medical diagnosis of ailments. By using a stethoscope, health care providers can listen and identify sounds associated with abnormalities. The most common of these are heart murmurs which, when properly identified, indicate specific abnormalities in the function of the heart. Identifying specific murmurs, like identifying heart sounds, is difficult. Developing the skills necessary to make a proper analysis takes years of study and practice. Since many heart murmurs are rare or seldom encountered by the general physician or medical students, expertise is never acquired.
Furthermore, most body sounds fall either just at or below the audible frequency range of the human ear. Therefore, even with years of experience, the ability of a physician to perform an accurate diagnosis is limited by the fact that conventional stethoscopes do not have adequate audio resolution. This inadequacy is caused by a number of factors. One significant cause is the tube or conduit connecting the housing to the ear pieces. In a conventional stethoscope this conduit is generally a single acoustic chamber formed by the inner diameter of a flexible tube. This conventional structure has drawbacks in that it does not permit maintenance of separate channels for the left and right ears. Further, this conventional structure is susceptible to interference from external noise caused by physical contact.
Modem electronic stethoscopes can improve sound quality and provide visual indication of heart sounds or chest sounds. However, these electronic stethoscopes are more expensive and bulkier than conventional stethoscopes and typically require significant external electronics to operate. Moreover, the performance of these modem stethoscopes is typically also limited by the structure of the conduit connecting the housing and ear pieces.